A thrillingly original exploration of a life lived under poetry’s uniquely seductive spell

“Oh! there are spirits of the air,” wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this stunningly original book Maureen N. McLane channels the spirits and voices that make up the music in one poet’s mind. Weaving criticism and memoir, My Poets explores a life reading and a life read. McLane invokes in My Poets not necessarily the best poets, nor the most important poets (whoever these might be), but those writers who, in possessing her, made her. “I am marking here what most marked me,” she writes. Ranging from Chaucer to H.D. to William Carlos Williams to Louise Glück to Shelley (among others), McLane tracks the “growth of a poet’s mind,” as Wordsworth put it in The Prelude. In a poetical prose both probing and incantatory, McLane has written a radical book of experimental criticism. Susan Sontag called for an “erotics of interpretation”: this is it. Part Bildung, part dithyramb, part exegesis, My Poets extends an implicit invitation to you, dear reader, to consider who your “my poets,” or “my novelists,” or “my filmmakers,” or “my pop stars,” might be.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Maureen N. McLane is the author of two collections of poetry, Same Life (FSG, 2008) and World Enough (FSG, 2010). My Poets (FSG, 2012) was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.

Book Description Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Book Condition: New. Brand New, Unread Copy in Perfect Condition. A+ Customer Service! Summary: "To read McLane is to be reminded that the brain may be an organ, but the mind is a muscle. Hers is a roving, amphibious intelligence; she's at home in the essay and the fragment, the polemic and the elegy. She can be confessional and clinical and ludicsometimes all in the same sentence. What I'm trying to say is that McLane has moves . In her new book, My Poets , she invites us to read over her shoulder as she combs through 'her' poets, including Chaucer, H.D., Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Glck. It's a work of personal and poetic archaeology . . . The prose is thick with quotation and self-interrogation . . . Forensically close readings dovetail with spirited defenses of the poets posterity has misunderstood, fresh readings of the familiar, and formal experiments . . . It's a visceral kind of criticism, sexy, strange, suspenseful . . . Language enters McLane's body like a current. Her whole body bucks and shudders. Her responses are forcefully somatic . . . and matched by the syntactical sophistication of her thought, her attraction to contradiction . . . McLane's personality, her laconic wit and iconoclasm, suffuse this book . . . There is explicit autobiography here, too, painful self-disclosure, that gives the book its emotional torque . . . This isn't the language of criticism; this is the language of seduction, a celebration of yearning, of not-knowing and not-having . . . Susan Sontag called for an erotics of art. My Poets is that more; it is an erotics of epistemology. A celebration of meaning and mystification, of the pleasures and necessity of kankedort. As McLane writes, 'All honor to those who wave the pure flag of a difficult joy.'" Parul Sehgal, Bookforum "[A] beguiling new book . . . Genially, charismatically subversive . . . In this book McLane comes into contactrepeatedly, playfully, and with great seriousnesswith verbal art, and is changed by it. My Poets is a delightful shock. It's also a friendly book, inviting readers by its own example to let poems change them too . . . McLane recognizes that we all read with baggage. She reports on that baggage, miraculously without the cloistered narcissism typical of memoir. It's part of this book's strength, and its broad appeal, that McLane is willing to get personal while also tossing off niftily worded assessments of poems . . . My Poets is McLane's story of learning to embrace the ambivalence of her own taste in poems and in people, and of learning to live and read in contradiction . . . Poetry clarifies our loneliness, restores textures to life's flatness and abysses, makes the world bigger, and closer. Perhaps it makes us interesting, even beautiful, or anyway, human. McLane's many dictions and registers, her playful digressions and pouncing aperus, her fast foot-work that takes her from sorrow to arch amusement in half a sentence, work to demonstrate that." Daisy Fried, The New York Times Book Review "Those seeking a critical introduction to Chaucer, Elizabeth Bishop, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H.D., Louise Glck, Fanny Howe, Dickinson or ShelleyMs. McLane's titular poetswill find something much more exhilarating . . . and impassioned. At a time when execrable "lyric essays" flourish as an excuse to avoid critical thinking, Ms. McLane has written lyrical essays that justify the genre . . . Ms. McLane's discussions of her poets are interwoven with autobiographical accounts of what was going on in her life when she discovered them . . . she is able to elucidate why poetry can matter to a life without straining for the unconvincing uplift that mars so many books on poetry written for a general audience . . . [McLane] is clearly having fun . . . If you already love poetry, Ms. McLane's book will rekindle old passions and ignite new ones. And if you don't already love poetry, well, the central insight of My Poets , as of all literary. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_new_0374217491

Book Description Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012. Hardback. Book Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from US within 10 to 14 business days. Established seller since 2000. Bookseller Inventory # VV-9780374217495

Book Description Farrar, Straus Giroux Inc, United States, 2012. Hardback. Book Condition: New. 211 x 147 mm. Language: English Brand New Book. Oh! There are spirits of the air! wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this stunningly original book Maureen N. McLane channels the spirits and voices that make up the music in one poet s mind. Weaving criticism and memoir, My Poets explores a life reading and a life read. McLane invokes in My Poets not necessarily the best poets, nor the most important poets (whoever these might be), but those writers who, in possessing her, made her. I am marking here what most marked me , she writes. Ranging from Chaucer to H. D. to William Carlos Williams to Louise Gluck to Shelley (among others), McLane tracks the growth of a poet s mind , as Wordsworth put it in The Prelude . In a poetical prose both probing and incantatory, McLane has written a radical book of experimental criticism. Susan Sontag called for an erotics of interpretation : this is it. Part Bildung, part dithyramb, part exegesis, My Poets extends an implicit invitation to you, dear reader, to consider who your my poets , or my novelists , or my filmmakers , or my pop stars , might be. Bookseller Inventory # AAS9780374217495

Book Description Farrar, Straus Giroux Inc, United States, 2012. Hardback. Book Condition: New. 211 x 147 mm. Language: English Brand New Book. Oh! There are spirits of the air! wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this stunningly original book Maureen N. McLane channels the spirits and voices that make up the music in one poet s mind. Weaving criticism and memoir, My Poets explores a life reading and a life read. McLane invokes in My Poets not necessarily the best poets, nor the most important poets (whoever these might be), but those writers who, in possessing her, made her. I am marking here what most marked me , she writes. Ranging from Chaucer to H. D. to William Carlos Williams to Louise Gluck to Shelley (among others), McLane tracks the growth of a poet s mind , as Wordsworth put it in The Prelude . In a poetical prose both probing and incantatory, McLane has written a radical book of experimental criticism. Susan Sontag called for an erotics of interpretation : this is it. Part Bildung, part dithyramb, part exegesis, My Poets extends an implicit invitation to you, dear reader, to consider who your my poets , or my novelists , or my filmmakers , or my pop stars , might be. Bookseller Inventory # AAS9780374217495

Book Description Hardcover. Book Condition: New. 149mm x 25mm x 216mm. Hardcover. A thrillingly original exploration of a life lived under poetry's uniquely seductive spell"Oh there are spirits of the air," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this stunningly .Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. 273 pages. 0.404. Bookseller Inventory # 9780374217495

Book Description Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2012. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. 15.24 x 22.22 cm. Combines criticism and memoir to examine the poets that had the greatest effect on the author's life, including Chaucer and Shelley.Our orders are sent from our warehouse locally or directly from our international distributors to allow us to offer you the best possible price and delivery time. Book. Bookseller Inventory # MM-20750727

Book Description 2012. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. 149mm x 25mm x 216mm. Hardcover. A thrillingly original exploration of a life lived under poetry's uniquely seductive spell"Oh there are spirits of the air," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this stunningly original b.Shipping may be from our UK, US or Australian warehouse depending on stock availability. 273 pages. 0.404. Bookseller Inventory # 9780374217495